All three winning housing projects in this year's NZIA Taranaki-Manawatu Architecture Awards are renovations.

The winners, which were in the Housing - Additions & Alterations category, include two smaller projects described as "pocket rocket renovations that offer high-quality design solutions to their clients".

One such "pocket rocket" is Villa Cuba, a small brick and glass addition to an existing Victorian villa. Palmerston North architect Agneesh Brahmbhatt, who led the awards jury, said this addition, designed by Black Pine Architects, was achieved with "modesty and simplicity".

MARK BRIMBLECOMBE

A glass box leads down to the new brick addition in the Villa Cuba project by Black Pine Architects.

"Some materials found on site were repurposed for the extension, and this allowed the narrative of the older house to continue into the new."

Karina House, designed by Gibbons Architects, is another "pocket rocket" project. Brahmbhatt said the owner of the home has a "deep personal connection to site and dwelling", which could have led to an "overworking" of the project by the young architect. "Instead, the work is thoughtful, quiet and mature. This is an elegant reworking of a 1980s family home."

MARK BRIMBLECOMBE

The Villa Cuba addition features an island wrapped in stone.

Brahmbhatt also praised Barbour House, an alteration project by Boon Goldsmith Bhaskar Brebner Team Architects (BGBBTA), and the way the architect has "cleverly held onto some of the existing 1970s coastal house and worked it into the new ensemble, lending it a sense of time and place and a pleasing humility".

BGBBTA also received a small project architecture award for Stratford District Council's Library Redevelopment, the jury was impressed by the way the library now opens up to the street on one side and the public plaza on the other to create a "living room for the town".